A multi-million naira fraud is at the centre of an on-going internal investigation in Nigeria’s anti-graft agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC. The fraud which covers the entire tenure of the agency’s immediate past Chairman, Ibrahim Lamorde, till date, has the Commission’s Director of Finance and Accounts, Bukar Abba as the principal suspect.

Multiple sources in the Commission told iReports-ng.com in Abuja that hundreds of millions of naira were secretly stolen from the agency’s Security Vote/Information Fund account domiciled in a new generation bank between January 2012 and December 2015 by Bukar Abba popularly called ‘Shekau’ by many EFCC staff who accuse him of wickedness only similar to that of Boko Haram leader Abubakar Shekau.

iReports-ng.com further gathered that soon after Ibrahim Lamorde brought back Bukar who had been transferred to Gombe since 2008, and appointed him the Director of Finance and Accounts at the headquarters in Abuja, Bukar allegedly applied and obtained an ATM card on the Security Vote/Information Fund account through which he systematically draws his own cash over the years.

Staff said Bukar was so powerful under Lamorde that he was a defacto Chairman, taking sensitive actions without approval including transferring staff out of the Commission and outrightly stopping the salaries of others. Trouble however started for him when Lamorde was sacked and Ibrahim Magu was appointed as acting Chairman. Several staff who knew about some of Bukar’s excesses started bombarding Magu with information about some of the shady deals that had been going on in the Accounts Dept especially the moment the suspect proceeded on annual leave last December. He resumed work in January.

An embarrassed Magu was said to have ordered for a probe which will ascertain how much has been stolen so far from the account and establish whether he was perpetrating the fraud with the connivance of Lamorde or any other staff. A competent official of the Accounts Dept who spoke with iReports-ng.com in Abuja on Saturday however estimates what has been stolen from the Security Vote account to be well above N360 million over a period of four years.

Since last Friday when the news of the probe filtered out officials of the agency, it has been the subject of hot gist among officials who are asking for proper of the Lamorde years to uncover the stinking rot in the agency. If indicted, Bukar who should be retiring from public service by the middle of the year may spend his retirement in jail and made to refund stolen money

– iReport